I don’t know how many people have seen FB blind’s medium post, but I wanted to write a response to that. I don’t want to say that they were brave to speak out, because they shouldn’t be. Whenever I’ve spoken out the overwhelming response has been “Oh, it’s so brave of you to speak out”. It always felt awkward, because it seemed like a normal thing for me to do. But if I’m brave to do it surely it must be wrong. Why is it?

Reacting to the article

Reading that article made me feel all kinds of anger, not because I was angry at the injustice they had faced, but because for a lot of those things I had faced myself to the point they had become normal. They were yet another group, Big Company HR has failed. And whether you choose to kick up a fuss or not it doesn’t really matter. You speak out, and nothing changes… And the most horrifying thing is at the end of the day we end up thinking all the bad things are normal, and this is as good as it gets. And then suddenly, what that anonymous poster said about being grateful to work at a Big Tech Company, and be grateful that you, a diversity hire, got hired in the first place becomes ever so slightly more true, not because it is, but because it’s starting to feel like it is. And that makes me angry. I am not black, but in tech I am a minority. And whilst I was never mistook for waitstaff, everything felt so relatable. I recognised scenarios as they had played out in my experience.

Talking to HR

The more optimistic could think that talking to HR would be the solution, that’s what they’re there for. But are they really? HR’s job is to make sure the company is not liable to be sued. They have and always will have the company’s best interest at heart. If someone tells you that: when you plan on having children, you have to tell them so they don’t work with you anymore, but there’s nobody to confirm that happened, from an HR perspective it doesn’t matter. Like one of the anonymous posters pointed out, people would never say anything in writing that incriminates them, so the company is safe. By making an HR complaint you are putting yourself in a vulnerable position. You are asking them for help, and it may seem that they would want to help you, but truly they serve the company. It will rarely be that you have evidence to all these things happening, we don’t record every conversation we have, neither would we be able to write everything down and get signed confessions from everyone that that was the state of the conversation. So most of the time you will have no proof of discrimination. If there is no proof HR either won’t believe you or just won’t do anything about it. And because there’s no proof you wouldn’t be able to sue the company either. So yes, HR will lead an investigation, but it will be to the company’s interest. As much as any big company will say that they have a strong anti-retaliation policy, when they don’t believe you in the first place how will they believe you now?

So vote with your feet and leave

That is one solution, and the more seasoned or cynical (they seem to go hand in hand) women I’ve talked to will all say the same, it doesn’t really get any better. Anywhere you go there will be someone like that. You just have to work 10 times harder and they will only be able to bury 90% of you. Do I really want to get to a point where I believe that? And what can we even say about a society where that is true? The more optimistic will point out that not all people are like that and they are in a minority, so just changing teams would do the trick. But then what about the eroded trust in the company? How can you tell, until it’s too late? Do you move so far away that all the experience you’ve accumulated is useless, just so those people can’t reach you? Or maybe leave to a different company, but then how can you decide where to avoid this happening all over again? And why should you leave?